Two Brothers, Two Lives

December 15, 1985|By Nancy Pate of the Sentinel Staff

Some of the best stories are also true ones, as is the case with these new nonfiction paperbacks.

Brothers and Keepers, by John Edgar Wideman (Penguin, $6.95): The author and his younger brother, Robby, grew up in a black ghetto in Pittsburgh. John became a Rhodes scholar, an English professor and a prize-winning novelist. Robby drifted into a life of drug addiction and crime, ending up in prison serving a life sentence without parole. Here, the older brother tries to come to some sort of understanding of how he and Robby arrived at such different destinies. It's a passionate, moving and often angry story.

THE WAR WE WON

The Good War, by Studs Terkel (Ballantine, $4.95): In this fine and illuminating oral history, ordinary men and women talk about their experiences during World War II. Terkel interviewed not only soldiers, from GIs to generals, but also those on the home front -- factory workers, bureaucrats and conscientious objectors.

GRADUATES OF HIGH-TECH

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, by Stephen Levy (Dell, $4.50): In high school, they were known as geeks and nerds. But they turned out to be whiz kids when it came to computers. This is a non-tech look at those high-tech heroes, the hackers who first understood the implications of computers, who built the first ones for home use, who designed the first computer games. Levy is a first-rate storyteller, and the book is both absorbing and entertaining.

ROYKO HAS A SAY

Like I Was Sayin' . . . , by Mike Royko (Jove, $3.95): Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko has been having his say since 1963, tackling such subjects as feminism and racism, presidents and pasta, roller skates and wimps. This is a collection of 100 of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist's best pieces, from 1966 to the present.

AMERICA AS A KID

O America: When You And I Were Young, by Luigi Barzini (Penguin, $6.95): The author was 16 when he arrived in New York City from Italy in 1925. This is his story of the next five years, years he spent as a college student and cub reporter, plunging into the excitement and innocence of American life in the Roaring Twenties. In May of 1930, Barzini returned to Italy and went on to become a world-famous journalist, editor, publisher and author. But he never forgot his coming-of-age in an idealistic America.